I worked alongside a team in 2014 on a system that classified and counted LEGO. The concept worked but to industrialize the process was pretty challenging. Dealing with parts stuck together was the biggest problem. I love the fact that you went super meta and also made the machine out of LEGO
Agreed. Selling the unit is an option but also selling the design so people can built their own is a good idea too since .. they obviously have legos and want to build stuff (would rather sort than toss). Lego inc. might even be interested!
Are there plans for this? Is there a new version? I'm curious where this has gone in 3 years. Would love to see something like this open sourced (or sold) so the community can build on this.
The LEGO Company should make and sell lego-sorting machines. It should be possible to instruct the machine to sort bricks for a particular lego set, and note which pieces are missing (then automatically create a list of Bricklink).
Wow Daniel, super impressive! I am amazed at the creativity, resourcefulness, and just how cool it was that you did this. I am going to show this to my young son as an example of what he can aspire to with some some creativity and fortitude.
This is an amazing proof of concept. A very useful machine. Please consider making one to sort nuts, bolts and screws, and get rich selling it to DIYers. I'd be ready to pledge like 100$ if you needed crowdfunding.
Step one: buy a big pile of legos Step two: build a sorting machine Step three: buy another big pile of legos Step four: sort the pile of legos Love it
This is fantastic! I've had this idea for awhile but just never had time to dedicate to the project. As a "Phase 2", my plan was to keep an inventory database of the detected bricks that were sorted. Then run this database against all available lego building set instructions. So based on the legos someone owns, they can choose a set of instructions and build to completion whatever the thing is. And on top of this, maybe add thresholds where a user can say they want lego instructions for sets that are a certain percent complete. so if i input 90%, it would find not only lego instructions for sets i can complete in its entirety but lego instructions where i have 90% of the bricks available to complete the set. One last thing, you could have a user community for contributing instruction sets. A person could filter on official only instructions or include user generated instructions as well. Anyway, it is a pipe dream of mine. If you are feeling ambitious, maybe it is something you could add on to your already awesome invention.
It would be the most expensive set you could have. Plus, you did read that it took 2 years to design and developed this, right? So how long do you think it would take to assemble one from a set? Perhaps at least two months? And that would be if you got every moving part/system together right the first time. Great idea though!
This would be insanely useful for sorting parts from new sets. I typically open 10-30 copies of a set at a time and match up the bags so there are about 25-35 unique parts in a batch of 1000+ pieces. Being able to have them sorted at even 95%+ accuracy would be huge. I'd love to help in testing to make this something that can be built and used by lots of people.
I work at a tortilla chips manufacturing company and they use the same technique of a vibrating plate to spread out the chips with before they pass them under a camera to see if there are too browned or burned chips among them.
Woahh!! Crazy stuff, I like. I've dreamt of a machine like this but in which you could feed in specific model(s) plan(s) so that the sorting can be made to segregate a ton-load of pieces by models. This could be a super tool for dads with kids that had way too much legos over the years and now all the pieces are mixed up in the same bin or part of a weird custom made model 😁 ....just an idea for your next project🤣
I'm totally in love with this project :D Great execution! Will surely feature this in my weekly technology report (even though I saw this a little bit late). Good luck with any following projects!
There is even a port of YOLO for the K210 (Search it on Github). That would be hard to optimize as easily as using a proper GPU on an external computer, but a good fun project. If only we had the dataset ;)
@@JonSmirl Yup, it's a fun toy. I have a few Sipeed Maix boards with the K210. Fun to play around with, but optimizing a model for them is a pain compared to throwing the image over the network sometimes.
It's trained on 3D models. So do you really think it's feasible to make a 3D model for every single type of plastic bottle, every color, every brand, every shape, not to mention variations of such bottles, whether they be dented, malformed, or otherwise misshapen?
Hello, Daniel. My name is Evgeny and I am owner of one of the largest used-lego-toy-parts stores on Bricklink. I am really interesting in such sorting machine. How can I contact you for discuss?
I would think that there is a much cheaper and faster way to create one of these machines opposed to doing it in lego. 3d printing parts would be cheaper, but I don't know if there's a design for that. However, you can always talk to daniel about it
What criteria do you use to determine which model part goes to which container? - all parts of the same color of whatever shape go to the same container - all parts of the building with the same shape regardless of color goes to the same container - all parts of a lego model such as a helicopter or fire station go to the same container
Can you make the training data available want to make a similar project but I don't really understand how you made the images or what AI you are using from the TensorFlow package.
Daniel, have you continued to use this machine or made improvements to it? There definitely needs to be an updated video to this (or additional article updates), preferably with more information on the details of its operation.
David, first off I love this so much you're a genius. Because the pieces aren't all the way sorted, could you put each bucket (category) back into the machine and let it further sort it? In the end, you could be 100% sorted. Just a thought.
I'm dreaming of the day when I can select a brick in an app on my phone, point the camera to a pile of Lego and it finds and highlights the brick on my screen. Sort of like the real time text translation, but then for finding Lego bricks.
Hi Daniel. Do you haev something where people can build this or are you selling plans? I'm asking because our community church puts on a lego event each year for a thing called KIDS games. WE have about TEN 20 gallon buckets of legos and we are in need of a sorter. Any possible help here you can provide would be great.
Can you put this on Lego Ideas, i know it would never get made but maybe its a way to give lego wake up call of what AFOLs really want . less time sorting and more time building !
Daniel - can you comment as to how you decided on the final buckets / taxonomy? Like, is it all gears in one bucket, and then simple blocks? I'd love to see more on that, if you do a followup video. Thank you!
Hey, Do you by any change plan to make your code available? I love this idea and I would like to try to give my own spin at it (possibly looking at how the sorting and storing could be done more efficiently). But my coding experience isn't that strong so it would help me to have a jump-off point.
I wonder how it handles non-Lego; either knock-off bricks or random objects. Also the feeder system requires that all the bricks be disconnected from each other inside the hopper. Would stuck together bricks be treated like a never before seen piece type?
I check up on the progress of this every few years. It would be great if some day there was a machine -- like a coinstar -- i could dump buckets of legos into for sorting! I would pay good money for that, though with so many different shapes and colors, I suppose it would be very difficult, as you demonstrate here. You would also have trouble with dust and other random junk that seems to build in lego storage containers over time. Also, where would it sort it into? I think perhaps a good business model would be to ask someone to ship you a box and then you would provide a storage container with many compartments. That would allow you to keep it relatively small scale until you had the capital to build more sorting machines.
Dude, this is amazing. Have you considered to use a Google Coral edge-processor to make it fully autarg? Basically a the Google Coral can infer Neural Networks really fast, and can be connected as a dongle to raspberry pi.
I'm curious if you will be able to link to resulting brick inventory to the bricklink database, so you instantly can see what sets the lot comprises of (and what stones are missing). Next step would be to sort the bricks straight into bins, dedicated to a single set.
Please consider a kickstarter or something, or selling plans and the software? This is amazing
i will eventualy do one that i will sell and it will handle as many different category as you want without more motor
@@minlrgo pls contact me
@@iRONcss do you have an email or discord
I’d like to invest if you need any funding. I’d also like to own 1. Please feel free to reach out!
@@csullivan626 are you speaking to me ? or to andrew or else ?
I worked alongside a team in 2014 on a system that classified and counted LEGO. The concept worked but to industrialize the process was pretty challenging. Dealing with parts stuck together was the biggest problem. I love the fact that you went super meta and also made the machine out of LEGO
Agreed. Selling the unit is an option but also selling the design so people can built their own is a good idea too since .. they obviously have legos and want to build stuff (would rather sort than toss). Lego inc. might even be interested!
Fantastic work, Daniel. Keep it up!
Instablaster.
Are there plans for this? Is there a new version? I'm curious where this has gone in 3 years. Would love to see something like this open sourced (or sold) so the community can build on this.
The LEGO Company should make and sell lego-sorting machines. It should be possible to instruct the machine to sort bricks for a particular lego set, and note which pieces are missing (then automatically create a list of Bricklink).
LEGO now have these and will buy your old LEGO. Sad day for Bricklink sellers!
Great project and execution. Bringing the best of LEGO and engineering together in a useful way!
Wow Daniel, super impressive! I am amazed at the creativity, resourcefulness, and just how cool it was that you did this. I am going to show this to my young son as an example of what he can aspire to with some some creativity and fortitude.
This is an amazing proof of concept. A very useful machine.
Please consider making one to sort nuts, bolts and screws, and get rich selling it to DIYers.
I'd be ready to pledge like 100$ if you needed crowdfunding.
Dude this is amazing and you are amazing, someone get this man some views
Nice! This video made it on to a news website here in The Netherlands!
Lol. Same. Just got it into my Google feed
Welke als ik vragen mag?
nu.nl
www.nu.nl/277861/video/slimme-lego-machine-herkent-en-sorteert-lego-stenen.html
Nog niet gelezen, ga nu bekijken!
I'm so glad someone brought this idea to life. It is incredible what you have created and I can't wait to see whatever you do next!
We want instructions!
How much for it? I’m serious.
Me too~^^
Sign me up
I also take one
About a grand i bet.
Well he said it’s made from over 10,000 pieces. So in addition to the computer, I’d say around $2,000-2,500
Step one: buy a big pile of legos
Step two: build a sorting machine
Step three: buy another big pile of legos
Step four: sort the pile of legos
Love it
This is fantastic! I've had this idea for awhile but just never had time to dedicate to the project.
As a "Phase 2", my plan was to keep an inventory database of the detected bricks that were sorted. Then run this database against all available lego building set instructions. So based on the legos someone owns, they can choose a set of instructions and build to completion whatever the thing is.
And on top of this, maybe add thresholds where a user can say they want lego instructions for sets that are a certain percent complete. so if i input 90%, it would find not only lego instructions for sets i can complete in its entirety but lego instructions where i have 90% of the bricks available to complete the set.
One last thing, you could have a user community for contributing instruction sets. A person could filter on official only instructions or include user generated instructions as well.
Anyway, it is a pipe dream of mine. If you are feeling ambitious, maybe it is something you could add on to your already awesome invention.
That technology already exists. Take a look at the "build" section of rebrickable.com/build/
That's incredible. Well done!
It would be nice to see this as an official LEGO set, I would definitely buy it !
It would be the most expensive set you could have. Plus, you did read that it took 2 years to design and developed this, right? So how long do you think it would take to assemble one from a set? Perhaps at least two months? And that would be if you got every moving part/system together right the first time.
Great idea though!
shut up and take my money!!
This would be insanely useful for sorting parts from new sets. I typically open 10-30 copies of a set at a time and match up the bags so there are about 25-35 unique parts in a batch of 1000+ pieces. Being able to have them sorted at even 95%+ accuracy would be huge. I'd love to help in testing to make this something that can be built and used by lots of people.
Why do you open 25-35 sets at a time? How had it been 3 years and no one questioned this?
How is the project going?
This is incredible!! Would you do a video on the 18 categories you use? I've been trying to find a good way to organize bricks.
I work at a tortilla chips manufacturing company and they use the same technique of a vibrating plate to spread out the chips with before they pass them under a camera to see if there are too browned or burned chips among them.
Well now you can input random variable images into the neural net and increase its efficiency!
Woahh!! Crazy stuff, I like. I've dreamt of a machine like this but in which you could feed in specific model(s) plan(s) so that the sorting can be made to segregate a ton-load of pieces by models. This could be a super tool for dads with kids that had way too much legos over the years and now all the pieces are mixed up in the same bin or part of a weird custom made model 😁 ....just an idea for your next project🤣
amazing. Been dreaming up something along these lines for years. Bravo on getting it done!
I'm totally in love with this project :D Great execution! Will surely feature this in my weekly technology report (even though I saw this a little bit late). Good luck with any following projects!
Great work! How accurate was the classification?
A Kendryte K210 Maix board (~$20) would be about 100x faster than the PI for the image recognition task. You can load tensorflow models onto it.
There is even a port of YOLO for the K210 (Search it on Github). That would be hard to optimize as easily as using a proper GPU on an external computer, but a good fun project.
If only we had the dataset ;)
@@nikkelitous s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/dl.kendryte.com/documents/kendryte_datasheet_20181011163248_en.pdf
@@JonSmirl Yup, it's a fun toy. I have a few Sipeed Maix boards with the K210. Fun to play around with, but optimizing a model for them is a pain compared to throwing the image over the network sometimes.
Hey this is great... You just discovered how to sort plastic bottles into the right plastic groups for recycling.
zebramax3 and, how many % are actually really recycled and not burned?
It's trained on 3D models. So do you really think it's feasible to make a 3D model for every single type of plastic bottle, every color, every brand, every shape, not to mention variations of such bottles, whether they be dented, malformed, or otherwise misshapen?
@Roman Hauksson-Neill For the non-popular ones, you can just sell it to the next guy with a better sorter. :-)
Hello, Daniel. My name is Evgeny and I am owner of one of the largest used-lego-toy-parts stores on Bricklink. I am really interesting in such sorting machine. How can I contact you for discuss?
Someone needs to sort alot of bricks
yeah and im the Executive Lego sorter at Lego university.
I would think that there is a much cheaper and faster way to create one of these machines opposed to doing it in lego. 3d printing parts would be cheaper, but I don't know if there's a design for that. However, you can always talk to daniel about it
Евгений Сусеков He has a Twitter link in the description
PLEASE PLEASE PLEEEAASSSSE SELL THIS AND MAKE A COMPANY
What criteria do you use to determine which model part goes to which container?
- all parts of the same color of whatever shape go to the same container
- all parts of the building with the same shape regardless of color
goes to the same container
- all parts of a lego model such as a helicopter or fire station go to the same container
It's arbitrary, and it would take a minimal point of code to change it to work like any of those options
Awsome project! Will you ever make any of the code/dataset public? 😊 I think the benefits would be great since more people could keep improving both 😁
Very cool project, have been following along on Twitter. Good job 😎
Hard work, passion, creativity, technology, ART!
Coolest thing Ive seen all week (month??)!!
This is what Bricklink Shop owners are waiting for xD
We could use that at Gears 2 Robots! So much time is spent sorting Lego Education kits after summer camps and classes!
nice machine did you have some instructions?
Please sell this plans and software, I need this 😂!
My son wants to start a brick business. How do I get a machine like this for him?
This is an amazing project. Well done.
Can you make the training data available want to make a similar project but I don't really understand how you made the images or what AI you are using from the TensorFlow package.
Any word on if this available?
Daniel, have you continued to use this machine or made improvements to it? There definitely needs to be an updated video to this (or additional article updates), preferably with more information on the details of its operation.
u are very smart, I have had ideas of a machine like this myself, but never understood how the computer would recognize a part
Underrated ngl, great
Hello Daniel. Is it possible to use your machine ? I am based in France and my son has about 40 lego boxes.
Great job Daniel!
Dang dude that is insane, I’d lose my mind building that thing you. are. truly insane! :)
David, first off I love this so much you're a genius. Because the pieces aren't all the way sorted, could you put each bucket (category) back into the machine and let it further sort it? In the end, you could be 100% sorted. Just a thought.
Also, your name isn't David that's a fun mistake, so sorry
I'm dreaming of the day when I can select a brick in an app on my phone, point the camera to a pile of Lego and it finds and highlights the brick on my screen.
Sort of like the real time text translation, but then for finding Lego bricks.
Wuao 2 años, excelente amigo, saludos desde Perú 🇵🇪
Cool design
This is soooo freakin cool!
wooow... Daniel you made incredible job. I love spend time with brick but sorting for long time is exhausting :D
This is awesome!
Hi Daniel. Do you haev something where people can build this or are you selling plans? I'm asking because our community church puts on a lego event each year for a thing called KIDS games. WE have about TEN 20 gallon buckets of legos and we are in need of a sorter.
Any possible help here you can provide would be great.
Hi Daniel, is there any Chance to get the Code/Software? Many thx.
How much to buy it
Awesome man... Nice Work
Can you make this as a lego set
Everyone need this set
I cant wait to see what you do next
:) Cheers
Very cool! Looking forward to the other video!
So cool! i saw this when i was at the Raspberry Pi website.
@Daniel West. can you share the how you builded the green shaker part?
私も興味があります。ぜひ教えてください
Can I apply for the code and assembly plan?
are you planning to open source your solution or sell it?
Can you put this on Lego Ideas, i know it would never get made but maybe its a way to give lego wake up call of what AFOLs really want . less time sorting and more time building !
You are a genius, absolutely amazing work.
I find very useful to sort lego by colors
Nicely done! Whats the failure percentage of this machine?
at 2:50 and 2:54 it seems it has a quite high fail chance
That's not failure. It has 18 bins, and thus has to put multiple pieces in the same bins. None of the parts between the two bins are the same.
Absolutely incredible
You could make a fortune selling the design online for this machine :D
Daniel - can you comment as to how you decided on the final buckets / taxonomy? Like, is it all gears in one bucket, and then simple blocks? I'd love to see more on that, if you do a followup video. Thank you!
Hey, Do you by any change plan to make your code available? I love this idea and I would like to try to give my own spin at it (possibly looking at how the sorting and storing could be done more efficiently). But my coding experience isn't that strong so it would help me to have a jump-off point.
Please tell me you sell the plans?
Wow. You win UA-cam this week!
Could it sort by color if you wanted
wow! great job!
I wonder how it handles non-Lego; either knock-off bricks or random objects. Also the feeder system requires that all the bricks be disconnected from each other inside the hopper. Would stuck together bricks be treated like a never before seen piece type?
Fantastic, well done
I love sorting Lego manually ;)
Do you wanna sorte mine too? :P
Me too. It has been my hobby for over 11 years now ... Sorted out some 6 kg's during last week .. ;-)
Really nice job !
Hope it will goes even faster !
I'll take one!!! Love it
I created an equivalent machine which divides into 6 without image recognition. How do parts fall in the rows below ?
Tell us more
how much?
Very impressive, and will help so many with other similar, and less similar projects! ❤
"Everyone hates sorting LEGO"
Speak for yourself, I LOVE sorting LEGO.
I check up on the progress of this every few years. It would be great if some day there was a machine -- like a coinstar -- i could dump buckets of legos into for sorting! I would pay good money for that, though with so many different shapes and colors, I suppose it would be very difficult, as you demonstrate here. You would also have trouble with dust and other random junk that seems to build in lego storage containers over time. Also, where would it sort it into? I think perhaps a good business model would be to ask someone to ship you a box and then you would provide a storage container with many compartments. That would allow you to keep it relatively small scale until you had the capital to build more sorting machines.
I have 3 bins of legos and not sorted I really want one
Would you make a list of what hardware/software you use for this? I am looking to make something like that but for YuGiOh cards sorting!
Great idea. Thank’s for sharing.
I would pay for instructions tbh.
Amazing work!!
Designing, building, prototyping, programming, bugfixing, and improving it is still probably faster than doing it manually.
Is there any chance you will make a commercial model?
Beautiful!
Dude, this is amazing. Have you considered to use a Google Coral edge-processor to make it fully autarg? Basically a the Google Coral can infer Neural Networks really fast, and can be connected as a dongle to raspberry pi.
Today it's really hard to find a coral sold somewhere anymore 😭
why did you use the 2 green plates and not a conveyer belt?
I'm curious if you will be able to link to resulting brick inventory to the bricklink database, so you instantly can see what sets the lot comprises of (and what stones are missing). Next step would be to sort the bricks straight into bins, dedicated to a single set.